by Pat Mills
Nikita did the robotic equivalent of a pout. "The other day, a robot preferred an ugly female droid with a squint to me."
"Don't take any notice of Mek-Quake. Tell me a little about your background."
"It is too soon to say this to you."
"Do you have any combat experience?"
"That is too personal to answer."
"How many people have you assassinated?"
"What a question! Why do you wish to know this?"
"Because it's important for us to know. We have to decide if you're suitable to be an ABC Warrior."
"Come on. Give me a break."
"My scanners reveal you have several guns and knives hidden on your person."
"So? Why are you looking in my underwear?"
"I'm sorry. Er... Tell me about your programmes."
"If I did, I would give too much away."
"Well, tell me about one of your recent missions."
"I cannot risk it. You might betray me."
"Why do you want to be an ABC Warrior?"
"I do not think that is any of your concern. I am sorry. I have to go now."
"Wait! How do we get in touch with you?"
"I will call you."
"Tell me, Nikita... Do you think you might be just a little too mysterious?"
She turned round and glared angrily at him. "How dare you say that? You do not know anything about me."
With that, she stalked off.
Hammerstein wondered if he would ever see the glamorous Russian robot again. Even in their one short meeting, he could feel himself falling under her spell. Which was a good reason why she should join the team and an even better reason why she should not. He couldn't make up his mind about Nikita. Either she was programmed to give nothing away under interrogation or, on a barking scale, she was up there with the best of breed at Crufts.
Not that madness would necessarily rule her out from joining the Warriors. After all, there was Mek-Quake and the others weren't exactly the sanest robots in the Galaxy.
"The problem is," said Hammerstein to Mongrol as they studied the CVs of the various applicants, "there just don't seem to be the real classic robots anymore."
They were in the missions room of the biol Bunkhouse. The wall Mongrol had destroyed had been recently replaced. The application forms and testimonials were spread all over the desk, at which the two robots were "seated." Of course no chair known to man that could possibly take their weight, but they liked to imitate floppies in all things. Consequently they were just assuming seated poses: Hammerstein in front of the desk, and Mongrol behind it. Unlike floppies, they were able to stay in a crouch indefinitely.
"Tell me about it," replied Mongrol. "None of them are in the same league as Morrigun."
"Well, there is Nikita, of course," said Hammerstein looking longingly out the window.
"No, there is definitely not Nikita," scowled Mongrol.
"But you should see her, Mongrol! She is absolutely amazing."
"I'm sure she is. And that's exactly why we don't want the gel," growled the massive ex-paratrooper, observing Hammerstein closely.
"What are you talking about?"
"Look," said Mongrol, taking a cigar out of a box; it was an affectation he had recently picked up, perhaps to emphasise his officer status. "We've got one love-sick robot on the squad already. And look at the trouble he's causing us. We still have no idea where Pineapples is, although I can make a fairly informed guess. We don't need any more hanky panky."
"You surely don't think-"
Mongrol plugged the cigar into the gun concealed inside his mouth. Compressed air valves within him enabled him to smoke it. He lit the cigar. "I surely do."
"Oh, that's absolutely ridiculous!"
"Is it?" Mongrol puffed smoke into the air. He'd seen floppies do this when they wanted to emphasise a point.
"Look, I'm not like Joe. I've far more sense."
Mongrol leaned forward on the desk, which was a little risky as it groaned under the weight of his power paws. "I hope so, soldier." He rocked back before the desk collapsed.
There was an uneasy pause. Neither robot wanted to get into another power clash and Hammerstein had to grudgingly admit to himself that, on this occasion at least, Mongrol was absolutely right. Nikita was bad news and they had had enough of that already. So he had to forget about her joining the Warriors. But, he reflected, if he wanted to see her in his own time that was entirely his own business.
Ruefully, he realised that in situations like this, he was a sergeant once again, and Mongrol his superior officer. And, although Mongrol wasn't throwing his weight around - thankfully - Hammerstein didn't like it. He decided to get away from the subject of Nikita.
"You know, I think back to some of the other meks who were once Warriors. If only we could find one like them."
"Yes," puffed Mongrol in his best Churchillian manner. "What we really want, of course, is another Steelhorn. The original seventh ABC Warrior. He was superb."
"Steelhorn? That's going back a bit, isn't it?"
"Indeed. All the way to the Volgan wars. He was that memorable."
"Funnily enough," mused Hammerstein, "I was thinking about him myself recently. I don't know why, but he just kept coming into my mind."
"That's odd," pondered Mongrol, leaving the smouldering cigar stub in an ashtray. "Blackblood and Joe mentioned him too. And Deadlock said he thought he saw a robot that looked like Steelhorn watching him when he visited Medusa at the Sweet Dreams motel."
"Imagine what a dream team we'd have if we found another Steelhorn," suggested Hammerstein.
"Dream on," replied Mongrol, absent-mindedly picking the end of his gun barrel. "Where on Mars are we going to find another Steelhorn?"
The original seventh ABC Warrior had been memorable indeed. Although he had not been quite what they expected when he was first chosen. Steelhorn was designed to be able to survive the most intense temperatures of the hottest furnace. His appearance was also designed to intimidate. He wore a Viking-style helmet that out-horned Hammerstein: it was encrusted with crystals that provided further heat protection, and he had projecting mandibles and a chain mail beard. Not to mention the heavy-duty combat hammer he carried.
Steelhorn had once served with distinction in a vast war on Earth against the Volgan Empire. It was the same titanic struggle that the other ABC Warriors had been created for. He had fought with distinction.
Following a military coup by Marshal Vashkov, there was a revival of fascism in Eastern Europe. Vashkov had been brought up in Stalingrad and had revered Josef Stalin. He went a little strange after "Uncle Joe's" statue was brought crashing down and his beloved city of Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.
Possessed by the spirit of Uncle Joe, Vashkov had tried to revive the glories of the original vast Volgan Empire. This was created in the Middle Ages around the Volga River and stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic Ocean.
Vashkov was even worse than his well-documented rival Zhirinovsky, who once received twenty-four per cent of the Russian vote. Zhirinovsky said, "We haven't forgotten English treachery. You're a small island, so you watch out. We will create new Hiroshimas and new Nagasakis. I will not drag my feet over the use of nuclear weapons. I am God. I am a tyrant. My name means Ruler of the World."
It was during the Volgan Wars that the ABC Warriors first won their spurs. While Allied human soldiers directed them from far behind the front line, millions of robots, many straight off the assembly line, were killed in action fighting their Volgan equivalents.
Hammerstein was one of the most successful combat models and one of the few survivors of the koroda gas that would sweep across the battlefield. He was a Mark Three fitted with a programme that meant he would always do his duty and obey his human masters. At the same time he would never harm innocent civilians.
Joe Pineapples had been a top ABC sniper, a member of the First X-terminators. He had been reassigned to regular combat following a scandal,
the details of which were classified for over a hundred years; and which he even now refused to talk about. However, it was believed that a general's wife was involved. This was a pattern of social behaviour that was to repeat itself throughout his career.
Mongrol, the robot paratrooper, had also fought in the Volgan War. But when his parachute had failed to open during a full-scale aerial assault, he had been put back together again by Lara, the beautiful battle-comber, from parts of fallen comrades. The result was a weird Humpty Dumpty figure with short little legs and massive power paws. Not long after, Lara had been shot by the Volgans for creating Mongrol.
Deadlock was the Grand Wizard of the Knights Martial in those early years. From their watchtower circling the Earth, this robot brotherhood looked down on the battlefields, recording and filing details of Volgan war crimes. They were given special authority to try and execute war criminals. But there were rumours of other things. Of strange experiments and terrifying powers gained at secret ceremonies. Undoubtedly Deadlock's interest in death and the occult stems from this early period.
Blackblood was the commander of the Straw Dogs, an elite Volgan robot division. Armed with tripod tanks, they were the most terrifying of all the Volgan forces. Named from his habit of drinking the oil of dead ABC Warriors, he was programmed for treachery and low cunning. It was Joe's Magnum Macho 3000 sniper rifle that brought Blackblood's infamous career to an end and doubtless explained their ongoing animosity over the years. Despite undergoing brain surgery in an attempt to remove the evil from Blackblood's brain, they never really successfully turned him into a "good guy."
As for Mek-Quake, very little is known about the full metal juggernaut's career during the Volgan years. And it is not a period that Mek-Quake himself ever talked about. There are different stories, but one of the most authenticated, which Mek-Quake always hotly denied, was that he admitted himself to a disturbed machine asylum, as a voluntary patient suffering from shell shock. And he spent the entire war in a padded garage.
It was Steelhorn who brought the Volgan War to a conclusion. As the empire lay in ruins, Steelhorn broke through a flame barrier that burned with the heat of the sun itself in order to destroy the Volgan leader. Hammerstein had then attempted to recruit him as the seventh ABC Warrior, but after years of conflict, Steelhorn had had enough of violence and became a pacifist. He wanted to rebuild a world that had been smashed by robots. So, after he was demobbed, he intended to become a fire prevention robot.
This was not a career the floppies would permit him. With his awesome armour and strength, he was too much of a threat. He was tricked into entering a fusion furnace that transformed him into molten metal. It should have destroyed him utterly, but his sentience was transferred into the metal itself - the pulsating, oozing molten slime. This was possible because his cellular structure and intelligence were still encoded at the microscopic level. So, with nowhere else to go, he was preserved in a special vacuum flask. Steelhorn, aka "The Mess" became the most unlikely member of the ABC Warriors.
Later, when the Warriors first came to Mars, he had become the arteries of a giant robot, a Gargantek called George. He was one of the early terraformers now in need of a major overhaul; there was a lack of coordination between his massive limbs. Steelhorn's grey nanotechnology goo had become George's life blood. Hydraulic pumps sent the liquid flowing round George's body, sending and receiving signals from the massive creature's sub-brains. And it was there the ABC Warriors had left him when they departed from the Red Planet. George now "walked tall," taller than he'd ever walked in his life, thanks to Steelhorn.
But in the centuries that followed, as Medusa reluctantly awoke, she saw the terraforming robots as her particular enemies. They had committed the ultimate crime by reshaping her world, and making it in the image of her sister Gaia. So a suitable marsquake disposed of George the Gargantek for good.
But inside him, Steelhorn still lived. And the planet was aware that he still lived.
So when the ABC Warriors returned to Mars and began getting in her serpent-coiffured hair, it occurred to Medusa that it might be rather a good idea if she had a Warrior on her side.
Accordingly, she arranged for George's shattered body and its frozen, yet sentient, occupant to be collected by the Sunset Motor Company and brought back to the factory. There, in Area 66, the tiny nanobots that were programmed to build anything from basic materials, studied Steelhorn's codes and went busily to work on constructing a duplicate. Dismantling and melting down George, they used him for raw materials to recreate Steelhorn as he once was. So he was once again the mighty war robot he had been, all those centuries ago during the Volgan War. However, by building him molecule by molecule, the nanobots had created a version that was flawless and even more awesome than the original.
Now he would do her bidding. In the process, it was necessary to turn him against his prime directive to save human life. Given how humanity had betrayed him by changing him into "The Mess" that had not been too difficult. Then she gave him a new prime directive; to help ensure that she died. So now he would walk the planet as her messenger. The voice of Mars. Human life would become an abomination to him.
With her plans for the next stage in her campaign nearing completion, Steelhorn was a vital part of that campaign. Their old comrade was about to become the ABC Warriors' greatest opponent.
TWENTY-ONE
Joe advanced on foot across the desert towards Damnation Island: sniper rifle in one hand, machine pistols at his hip, a band of knives and grenades across his waist. If he came across any guards, he had to kill them silently and he definitely had to kill. No one must know he was on his way. Micro-jets in his feet dispersed the sand and immediately covered his footprints. He saw a couple of jeeps in the distance but they moved away soundlessly in the opposite direction. Some Martian deathkites flapped silently across the sky. Joe received yet more thought-mails from Hammerstein ordering his immediate return and he continued to ignore them. He shut down all signal contact so that no scanner devices could be aware there was an intruder approaching Camp Diaz.
A triboar galloped past Joe, taking no interest in him whatsoever. Its mouth was agape and its hooves were soundless in the soft sand. Which was unusual because triboars were usually easily provoked. It was a six legged, three-eyed, three-tusked animal that, apart from its trinary configuration, roughly resembled a wild boar from Earth.
And in less than one third of a second, Joe's lightning brain made the following high-risk assessment; the triboar is disturbed by something. It's afraid, but triboars are usually belligerent. The triboar's normal sound was Vvvvrooooh! But it was silent. The jeeps were silent. The deathkites were silent.
Joe looked around him. It was very quiet. He couldn't see the threat. But he knew it was there because it was too quiet.
He hastily buried himself deep in the soft sand.
He only hoped he was in time.
He figured they may have detected Hammerstein's thought-mails, and were using them to home in on him.
They might have picked up the sound of the micro-jets in his feet, but nothing more. All his internal motors were acoustically camouflaged.
So were his enemy's.
Even though the sound was purely internal, he could normally hear a light hum from his own primary motor. That had stopped too.
Everything was silent.
Silent as the grave.
The enemy was sucking in all the sound around them.
To be fitted with silencers that size, it must be a Behemek.
It was the only way that you could tell when a Behemek was coming; when everything went quiet. Quiet as the grave. Moments later, Joe could see it through the sand on his infra-red vision. A gigantic, hulking tank that should have rumbled and thundered and clattered as it sped across the desert, but instead it moved forward with not even a whisper.
All you could hear was the sound of silence.
Four clone soldiers silently jumped out of the tank and began spread
ing out. They were armed with state of the art weaponry and they were looking for him. He knew that now. He silently cursed himself for not switching off his thought-mail inbox earlier. Or maybe they'd picked up the sound of his feet micro-jets, but he couldn't have risked leaving footprints in the sand. That was always his problem, he berated himself. He was just too self-confident and had too low an opinion of the enemy.
As the Behemek moved further away disgorging more soldiers, sound slowly started to return. But it was still very soft so he had to strain his receptors to make out what they were saying.
"The intruder's here somewhere."
"Shoot to kill."
"The senator doesn't want anyone knowing what's happening on Damnation Island."
They wouldn't detect his body in the sand, of course. Naturally, he had all the appropriate anti-detector devices. But they still weren't going to leave until they'd found him; so he was going to have to kill them. He knew from the style of their uniforms and helmets that they were anti-laser, anti-radiation. They also had high-velocity protection energy fields that could stop anything from a bullet to the largest lump of shrapnel. It was going to be a tough fight.
But that was okay; he was going to come in up close and personal with a knife.
He reared out of the ground, right behind a clone, put a knife to his windpipe and expertly cut his head off.
A second clone turned in his direction. Joe threw a knife straight at him and it buried itself in his heart. It was a lethal throw, but it wasn't high velocity, so the soldier's anti-ordnance field didn't save him.
That was the problem with high-tech, Joe reflected. It just gets higher and higher and you forget about the old ways of killing. But Joe never did.
In this era, knives and grenades were the equivalent of crossbow bolts or muskets from the Napoleonic Wars. But they still worked. They still killed - as the last two clones discovered the hard way.
That said, the dead clones' DAs would have immediately alerted their commander that they were dead and the Behemek would be coming back for him. Which, of course, it was; it was obvious by the sudden hush in the air and heavy-duty machine gun bullets that kicked up dust all around him. They were still within the tank's sound field, so all you could hear was a very slight Tss! Tss! Tss! And even that may have been his imagination. A Behemek's acoustic bafflers were that good.